Let
us imagine civil society as a space and time entity within which potentials of
a human being are comprehensively developed. Here, we have to recognise that
it exists not because of the fact that these potentials are not connected
entirely with the political section of society, which is historically
associated with the state. Civil society (as a possible reality), first and
foremost, refers to a difference between the terms ‘to be together’
civilly and ‘to be together’ politically, i.e. to the difference and
disjunction of two forms and methods of conceptual representation (and
specific realisation?) of a human life in a human community. The community is
thought as space that absorbs social ties as well as space where political
ties form a structure.

Does
this social dichotomy represent any reality of a historically specific
community or does it represent society through itself? Does it give a possible
social outline or produce a concept of an ideal society? In any case, it tries
to reach one goal – to define logic and dynamic characteristics of society
to better guide and control it. At any rate, the dichotomy needs historical
and theoretical validation.

The
understanding of civil society first of all requires an understanding of
‘living together’ dichotomy representation, i.e. presentation of dialectic
relations between the two poles, defined by the following ties: civil society/political
society. Civil society originally linked directly to political society by
society formation philosophy later begins gaining differences, with a certain
delay, of course. Historical processes characteristic of the Western
modernisation, cultural secularisation and political differentiation used to
lead to feudalism crisis, followed by democratic revolutions and law-rational
type states (Veberlen, analytical model); thus, the formation of civil society
is rooted from institutionalisation, followed by modernisation and expansion
of ‘stated’ political society. As political society was losing grounds as
authority and its vote of confidence was going down, as the role of ‘any
state’ was revised, civil society was gaining momentum, being the only
entity, in which frames the real human development is possible.

The
term ‘civil society’ emerged in the French language in the 16th century as
a translation of the Latin “Societas Civilis”, which approximately means
‘political society’ in the political philosophy of antique Greece, namely
Aristotelian philosophy. A synonym for political society is a city state.
Under Aristotelian philosophy, which served as a basis for M. Finley’s
‘invention of politics’ and democracy in a number of Greek city states (about
the 5th century B.C.), civil society is political society – the
only form and method of common living. It provides development of a human
being as a man is zoon politicon. Though not everybody lives in cities (some
live in ethnas, i.e. within tribal or ethnical communities without any
difference between political and social areas), it is the city that provides
the social minority of its citizens with society space, separated from clan,
domestic and economic relations where the law of ‘necessity’ sets the
rules. This space incorporates relations developing on the basis of freedom
and reason, relations guaranteed by recognising the equal right of each
citizen to build the common future. Civil society shapes out very clearly in
an original political form of the state city or Polis where Politela combined
with Filia and encouraged by Logos organises production and collective control
over Politica, through which a social group becomes a real human community.

This
original authentication of civil society and the ideal of political society,
in a specific historic form of the Athenian state city, were also used in the
Middle Ages in Augustinian political philosophy. This philosophy represents
the above authentication by displaying the difference between God’s City and
People’s City, presented as a circumstance of the original sin. The
authentication is shown within the frames of discrimination, conditioned by
various forms of political society organisation depending on whether these
forms restrict the ruler’s Libido Dominandi and guarantee subjects’ Pax
Civilis.

The
great movement of philosophy goes from Humanism of the Renaissance, from the
Reformation to the trinity of the Individual, Subject of Mind, and Personality
of the Age of Enlightenment, from Gobbs to Lokk and Russou. Being idealised,
the concept of civil society has been derived from necessity and violence,
characteristic of a ‘natural state’. It has been derived from obedience
and estrangement and despotism directly connected with that. The concept of
civil society based on the ‘free agreement’ between all citizens and
mutual guarantee of ‘natural rights’, converts historical reality of
modern state institutionalisation, France as the best example, into a new
ideal of a political institute.

From
the antique times to the Age of Enlightenment, the political idea of civil
society consequently became firmly established. It is seen as a frame and form
of organisation and a means to control public life. They are different; they
seem to be an ideal type of political society – that may differ in various
periods of time. It is based on various innovations and specific historical
political experiments.

Following
the new stage of political modernisation, (the democratic revolutions in
England, America and France) Hegel’s political philosophy will decisively
reduce functions of civil society to a set of institutions designed to meet
economic demands of members of a human community through the division of
labour, controlling private interests, reducing the role of the state as a
sovereign power authority, the only rational institution that can guarantee
the proper functioning of civil society, which is always under a threat of
centrifugal forces, caused by non-equality of positions and struggle of
interests among its members.

It
was the division made by Hegel and identified as the modern rational state
that Marx put in the core of his historic theory. However, he placed it upside
down beginning with interpretation of Bonaparte’s experience (from the 1st
to the 2nd Empire), which opposes Hegel’s philosophy. Marx pays great
attention to civil society. He defines it as an organisation of material
relations, built by members of a community around a certain mode of production,
with the latter depending on the development stage of productive forces.
Considering the economic and social basis in contrast with the political and
ideological superstructure, which is no more than a “reflection” of the
basis, Marx actually analyses the historic development of the political sphere
differentiation and institutionalisation as an inevitable process of defective
division of the basis and superstructure. This happens due to the
inappropriate division of labour and distribution of its results. Marx also
views the historic development of the kind as a process leading to a
“parasitic” outgrowth of the superstructure at the expense of the basis.
This, in turn, leads to the establishment of a repressive state featuring
antagonistic relations and relations of superiority of some social classes
over others as a result of such division. Marx regards an “uprising” of
Civil Society against the State as the only way to resolve the problem, which
at the same time can be viewed as a required condition for reconciliation and
consolidation of society within the framework of the existing mode of
production meeting the requirements of harmonious development of all potential
abilities of a human being.

Even if
up-to-date approaches to the problems of civil society do not claim any
connexion with Marx’s theory, nonetheless they inherit his idea as to a
distinction between Civil Society and Political Society, with the latter
associated with the State. They are also for sure connected with the
definition of Civil Society as certain space without the framework of
Political Society whose “social life is organised in accordance with its own
logic, for example the logic of associations neither controlled nor patronised
by the state” (D.Colas, Le Glaive et le Fléau. Généalogie de la Société
Civile et Fanatisme, 1992). Sticking to this understanding of Civil Society,
we may assume that, first and foremost, it is regulated by an array of
positive values, like self-sufficiency, responsibility, freedom to
independently solve one’s problems, etc.Being collective in nature and promoting solidarity, Civil Society is
free of individualism. Owing to its civil nature Civil Society embodies
freedom from the state control and promotes emotional and sensible values,
intimate and personal relations ensuring affinity between people. This
explains the revival of the Civil Society-State binomial today (F.Rangeon, La
Société Civile. Histoire d’un mot, 1986).

The
current revival of social and political thought prompted by keen attention to
the first element of the aforementioned binomial can be explained only in the
light of the recent revision (and even crisis) of the legitimacy of social
life’s political and state regulation present both in developed and
developing democracies, as well as countries at the transition stage.

From the
1970s to 1990s, critics of “real socialism” in the East used to define a
totalitarian regime as the absorption of Civil Society by the “state-vampire”,
while the collapse of such a state used to be associated with the revival of
Civil Society. At the same time, search for feasible self-government
alternatives to the doctrines of official leftist forces promoting a greater
role of the state in the West, renewal of liberalism in Britain and the United
States, revision of the European “State-the-Saviour” model, as well as
economic and cultural market globalisation, build of new trans- and
supra-state political regulation systems led to the fall of
“all-encompassing state” historic hegemony.

Despite the fact that today’s dynamic processes indeed contribute to
the freedom of civil society from the state and “re-investment” of values,
which were first accumulated and later wasted by the state in the course of
historic development, in civil society, we must not forget that the current
society representation concept stems from the same historic process. Being
human in nature, society, at the same time, preserves its political character,
too.

About the author
Patrick Lekont, professor,
Lion University, Lion Institute For Political Studies